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Alek Minassian allegedly posted a “cryptic” message on Facebook — which referred to an “incel rebellion” and American mass murderer Elliot Rodger — shortly before his arrest in a hit-and-run spree that killed 10 pedestrians, Toronto police told a news conference Tuesday.

But even as investigators acknowledged the since-deleted Facebook post, which began circulating on social media in the hours after Minassian’s arrest, questions about its authenticity focused on when and how it was published.

Facebook said it deleted an account which used the name and photo of Alek Minassian to make this post, apparently on the same day Minassian was arrested after a van struck numerous pedestrians on Yonge St., killing 10 people. (FACEBOOK)

Minassian appeared in a Toronto court on Tuesday charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder in connection with Monday’s van attack on Yonge St. south of Finch Ave., which left another 14 people injured.

The authenticity of the post was strongly questioned, both by academics and in online comments. Media manipulation experts warned that online hoaxes are extremely common in the wake of mass murders, particularly when it comes to stories involving 4chan — a notorious messaging site associated with troll culture, which is mentioned in the Facebook post attributed to Minassian.

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There were also questions raised about the timing of the post. An archive of the Facebook page appears to show a timestamp of 1:27 p.m. EDT, shortly after police started receiving calls about a van that had jumped the curb and struck pedestrians. An image of the Facebook message, which was posted anonymously to 4chan, suggested it was published at around 2:15 p.m., however, when Minassian would have already been in police custody.

Facebook lets users change the time and date of a post, raising the possibility the account may have been hacked and modified. A spokesperson for Facebook Canada would not answer specific questions about the timing of the post, but said the company believed it was legitimate and deleted the account, which had been made with Minassian’s name and photo.

“This is a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the people who have been affected. There is absolutely no place on our platform for people who commit such horrendous acts,” spokesperson Meg Sinclair said in an email.

“Incel” refers to the “involuntarily celibate,” or men who feel frustrated by their inability to find romantic relationships or sex. In many online communities, “Chads and Stacys” refer to attractive people who have no problem meeting partners of the opposite sex.

Online community forums frequented by incels often feature misogynistic rhetoric. The blog We Hunted the Mammoth, which tracks online misogyny, noted examples where incels have explicitly discussed or promoted violence and pointed to the forum Incels.me, where many commenters celebrated Monday’s van attack with posts like “I really want it to be true that the guy was an incel lmao” and “joyous day.”

“The incel revolution has begun,” wrote one commenter, who changed his avatar to a picture of Minassian.

(A forum administrator posted a message on Tuesday clarifying that Minassian has never posted on Incels.me and “as far as we are concerned, no one on the forum heard of him before these latest news.” “Being incel has no relation whatsoever with violence, aggression, misogyny, or any other negative connotation,” the admin wrote. “While he may have called himself an incel, he does NOT in any way represent the community.”)

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In November, a subreddit of 40,000 “incels” — which featured posts like “all women are sluts” and “reasons why women are the embodiment of evil” — was banned by Reddit, citing its policy prohibiting content that “encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people.”

An online petition that urged Reddit to shut down its incel page said “incels believe that they are entitled to the experience of sex.”

“With most every incel claiming to be unattractive, they believe that society has turned against them and are denying them a basic human right,” the petition stated. “This flawed way of thinking leads most incels to self-professed depression that has turned into bitterness that floods the subreddit’s posts. All sexually active women are routinely called whores. Violence against women is encouraged. Rape against women is justified and encouraged.”

The petition said members of the incel subreddit “canonized” Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old California man who killed six people in 2014, shortly after posting a video ranting about his sexual frustration and the women who rejected him.

In the incel subreddit, members referred to Rodger as Saint Elliot, “with many praising his actions and claiming that they would like to follow in his path,” according to the petition.

The post on Minassian’s Facebook page referred to Rodger as a “supreme gentleman,” echoing the descriptor that the California killer used to describe himself. On Tuesday, Rodger’s father said it has been “devastating” to learn about a possible connection between his son and the recent tragedy in Toronto.

“It’s a difficult thing to articulate, how devastating this is. It’s not only devastating for the victims (in Toronto), it’s also devastating for Elliot’s victims, to bring this all up again and make a hero out of a very disturbed individual,” Peter Rodger told the New York Daily News.

“This kind of copycat behavior is very sad. I don’t know what to do to try to stop this from happening again.”

The numbers cited in the cryptic Facebook post are still unexplained but they may be linked to Minassian’s time with the Canadian Armed Forces. Minassian was in the Canadian military between Aug. 23 and Oct. 25, 2017, and lasted only 16 days in recruit training, the defence department said in a statement Tuesday.

Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor with Mercer University who studies online communities, warns that stories linked to 4chan need to be approached with extreme caution. As a part of her research, Phillips spent years embedding herself into the culture of the image-sharing website, which is widely associated with trolling culture and far-right views.

Phillips studies 4chan hoaxes and said there’s been a “standard and steady effort” over the past decade to connect 4chan with stories in the headlines. She said 4chan members have long delighted in tricking journalists into mentioning the website in their news reports — to the point where claiming a 4chan connection in the wake of a high-profile atrocity has become a recurring trope or “meme” online. The meme is then further amplified by inaccurate media outlets reporting the alleged 4chan connection.

Phillips said she is skeptical of the Minassian Facebook post because she’s seen claims of a 4chan connection being made over and over again, with almost all of them eventually debunked.

But she said it is also possible that Minassian wrote the post — and if that’s the case, then it would be like a “meme coming to life.”

“If he actually posted that, then he is without question connecting himself to the long list (of) traditional hoaxes that have come and gone,” she said. “It would really call attention to the idea that we cannot think about online violence as being cordoned off from physical violence that can take lives.

“If this is a hoax, I’m going to be irritated. If it’s true I’m going to be terrified.”

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